"The central doctrine of Christianity, then, is not that God is a bastard. It is, in the words of the late Dominican theologian Herbert McCabe, that if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you."--Terry Eagleton

"It is impossible for me to say in my book one word about all that music has meant in my life. How then can I hope to be understood?--Ludwig Wittgenstein

“The opposite of poverty is not wealth; the opposite of poverty is justice."--Bryan Stevenson

Tuesday, April 10, 2018

Popcorn Futures Spike Upward

“In what way is an FBI raid on Michael Cohen’s office an attack on our country?” Karl queried.

Sanders implicitly defended the president by referring Karl back to Trump’s remarks.

“The president has been clear that he thinks this is gone too far,” Sanders stated. “Beyond that, I don’t have anything to add. But I’d refer you back to the president’s comments.”

“That amounts to an attack on our country?” Karl pressed.

“I don’t have anything to add,” Sanders replied dismissively.

Karl then wondered if Trump believed he has the power to fire special counsel Robert Mueller.

“He certainly believes he has the power to do so,” Sanders insisted.

He also believes he's smart, competent, and his word alone keeps the elephants away. None of those things are true. Can he fire Mueller? No; not directly, and not without a bloodbath. As some commenters indicated yesterday, the seizing of Cohen's records indicates Trump has little support in the DOJ; even Sessions wouldn't stand in the way of those search warrants, which makes you wonder what evidence they presented to support them (i.e., it must be really damning). If he starts plowing through them, how long until he finds his Bork? Longer than Nixon took, I suspect.

There's also the fact that the materials seized from Cohen cover a lot more than Stormy Daniels or even Donald Trump. They couldn't have been seized simply to put the screws to Cohen; there had to be other evidence to get this stuff, really damning evidence. But that's precisely how Mueller could use Cohen to break Trump, and whether Trump fires Mueller or not is now irrelevant: the DOJ has that information. And Trump is in no position to fire the entire Department of Justice and all the attorneys in all the offices of all the U.S. Attorneys in the country.

Firing Mueller will be as Sen. Grassley said, suicide. Oh, the GOP Congress may stick their heads in the sand (McConnell's words are only for the electoral chances in November, not for what Congress would do before November if....); but the blue wave would become a tsunami (IMHO) and wipe all before it, cleansing the Augean stables in a fit of electoral righteous wrath of the kind that punished Gerald Ford (long after the fact) and elected Jimmy Carter (who is a nice guy but was never much better a politician than Hillary). The country is fed up (look at the Parkland kids, look at the teachers, look at the elections so far since Trump took his hand off the Bible), and they aren't gonna take it anymore. If Trump fires Mueller, or even tries to, it won't end the investigations even within the FBI, and it will probably supercharge the DOJ. It will certainly put afterburners under the electorate, and his impeachment will become not a scary campaign problem, but a dead cert. Even Pelosi and Schumer would have to acknowledge it, or get the hell outta the way.

The searches [on Cohen's home and office] were conducted by the public corruption unit of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of New York, the Times reported. The interim U.S. attorney, Geoffrey Berman, is recused from the investigation, ABC News reported.